Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around OFK Beograd they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at AEK is saying, and nobody at OFK Beograd is enjoying the guessing.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Mladost Lucani have kept their man, and OFK Beograd go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Novi Pazar left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad2 Aug 2027
Saša Marković falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and OFK Beograd know it.
13 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at OFK Beograd this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at OFK Beograd, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Luka Zarić is on it.
He trains hard, says the right things and goes home to an empty flat. Nobody at OFK Beograd has done anything wrong, which is exactly what makes it so difficult to fix.
Sharpest man there all week, by every account. It is the quietest line on this page and it usually runs the week before somebody’s run in the side begins.
Jovan Šljivić was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad24 May 2027
Edmund Addo falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at OFK Beograd, and both men came out saying it was fine.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Dimitrije Aćimović and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad17 May 2027
Words at OFK Vršac training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Andrija Dimeski is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
In brief
The dugoutMouhamadou Fall is still being punished for one mistake
Dimitrije Aćimović was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Branislav Kocić was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at OFK Vršac, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at OFK Vršac. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at OFK Vršac, another week without a signature from Toyeeb Gidado.
Edmund Addo falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at OFK Beograd, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Kabir Osoba is on it.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Miljan Momčilović has written the date down.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. OFK Beograd know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at OFK Vršac this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Branislav Kocić was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and OFK Vršac know it.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at OFK Vršac this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Dimitrije Aćimović trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at OFK Vršac this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Andrija Dimeski was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
The dugout22 Feb 2027
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 1‑3 Nenad Milenkovic left the room before anybody could ask which.
The dugout22 Feb 2027
The manager has not finished forgetting Mouhamadou Fall's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
The shape wanted a different profile against this opponent, which is a real football answer and no comfort at all to the man it is about. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
Two goals and a mark of 8.62 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
23 points, and the rest of the division looking up. Every side that finishes first spends the season pretending it is not thinking about it, and this one has started pretending.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Mouhamadou Fall did not need any: 7.71, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Branislav Kocić and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Mouhamadou Fall has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Dimitrije Aćimović was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Branislav Kocić was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Dimitrije Petronijević. 2‑1 against Kabel, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Mladost Lucani have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Nenad Milenkovic on a 2‑1 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
Nobody at OFK Vršac will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at OFK Beograd this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
OFK Beograd asked and Napredak said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Add another name to the list: OFK Vršac have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Mouhamadou Fall. The answer from OFK Beograd has not changed — yet.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Vladimir Ilic has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Miroslav Markovic has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Djordje Krsticic has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Successful dribbles: 17. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad10 Aug 2026
10 new faces, and OFK Beograd are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.